Stimulus Accountability, Part II

Oct 17, 2012

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a stimulus-funded marketing program by the federal government. While not a huge waste of money compared to a stimulus over 1,600 times its size, the $500 million that went to market the stimulus is certainly nothing to sneeze at.

The government’s chief spending watchdogs have already secured nearly 600 convictions and judgments against people and companies accused of misusing stimulus funds and have a whopping 1,900 investigations currently open into possible wrongdoing, officials say.

The wave of scrutiny more than three years after the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was passed by Congress early in the Obama administration means the question of how money was managed early in the program is certain to extend well into the next year as many of the current investigations come to conclusion.

So far, the amount found to be fraudulent isn’t much, compared to the size of the stimulus, something for which we can be grateful:

The Recovery Board charged with coordinating efforts among…inspectors generals at more than two dozen federal agencies that distributed stimulus money posted an item on its official blog last month claiming the total amount of money lost to fraud from the $840 billion stimulus program was a miniscule $11.1 million so far.

Unfortunately, with so many open investigations, it is impossible to know how much money was actually wasted. The article says as much. As such, Tea Party Patriots will be keeping an eye on the proceedings of these investigations and report back as they develop. Given the number of investigations, we expect millions more to be found.